Welcome to Marketing Chronicles. A newsletter where marketers come for expert industry commentary at the intersection of strategy and creativity — every Wednesday sent before daybreak. If you like what you see, join us for free.

In this edition:

• Column: The Role of Brand Management

• Inspiration: Pizza Hut’s “ResZAmes”

• Upcoming: CMA’s “Strategy Week”

Column: The Role of Brand Management

Companies today simply cannot run a successful operation without a brand.

But companies that know how to MANAGE those brands properly often end up getting ahead.

This distinction is critical in order to understand the world of branding, yet so few know the difference.

But first, what is a brand?

What are Brands and Why They Matter

Many brilliant minds have crafted their own definitions of what a brand is. All of them added their own spin or perspective, and in general they’re all correct.

Take Paola Norambuena’s simple and elegant definition:

“A brand is the expression of the business in the marketplace.”

Others, like Al Achenbaum, describe it into a bit more detail:

“What distinguishes a brand from an unbranded commodity counterpart and gives it its equity is the sum total of consumers’ perceptions and feelings about the product’s attributes, about how it performs, about the brand name, and about the company associated with producing it.”

What I love about Al’s definition is that he touches on an critical concept to understand what makes a brand: commodity.

When we think of commodities we think of an oil barrel, sand, coal, etc.

But commodities can be anything that you pay for and does a job for you.

For example, a cup of coffee could be a commodity if all it is for is just a cup of coffee. The downsides of that are obvious — the producer of that cup of coffee is selling a product that’s solely evaluated on the basis of price (since quality for an unbranded cup of joe can only be evaluated on an individual basis and indicates no future reassurance that the next one will be as good, as you could be purchasing from a different coffee maker).

But what brands like Starbucks, for example, can do for a cup of coffee is stand for something, add some sort of meaning for the consumer consuming it.

In other words, every time we communicate that meaning to customers, we’re building brand.

But the traffic goes both ways here — every time we reduce investment, sell it at a discount, or cut marketing comms, we’re effectively commodifying our brand.

This means that when we take the “commodity” out of the brand, what we’re left with is what we call brand equity.

What Is Brand Equity

Brand equity has 4 key measures: recognition (aided awareness), recall (unaided awareness), top of mind (first mentioned), and brand salience (recall in buying situations).

While measuring this can be tricky, understanding how your brand scores at each can give you hints at what might be holding you back from growth.

For example, if people can recognize you but don’t really think of you in buying situations, then your awareness can only take you so far.

And for that matter, every brand has an awareness problem — meaning, that’s the starting point for everyone (unless you’re a gigantic global brand), so chances are that you need to improve it.

Contrary to what we, marketers, might think, most customers have never heard of our brands. So, it’s imperative that enough marketing communications investment is put behind it in order to drive awareness over time, and through high enough frequency or clever creative to be remembered at key buying situations.

The reality is that fighting for customers’ share of mind is incredibly difficult. Most of us can only hold 2-3 brands per category in our heads. So cracking into that Top 3 becomes ever more important particularly in low involvement purchasing situations (i.e.: buying toilet paper, chances are that you’ll buy what you bought last time or what you saw on TV the night before).

However, with brands that require a bit more involvement, such as higher priced services, ensuring that our brands are not only well-known but also associated with the right things becomes critically important to be considered as an option for what we’re looking for.

For example, if you asked people on the street which brand of airline first comes to mind, most people in Canada would say Air Canada or WestJet.

But if you asked them which brand of affordable airfare comes to mind, now you’ve rearranged the associations you’re asking consumers to think about and they instead might say Porter, Lynx or Flair.

The combination of these associations is what we call brand image. It is imperative that as we make investments behind our brands that we’re not just slapping our logos on anything — carefully selecting where we show up, how we show up, and when we show up all play a part in shaping the desired brand image in the minds of consumers.

And this practice of improving brand equity metrics is the difference between simply having a brand versus managing one.

The Bottom Line

Oftentimes a brand is the most valuable asset a company possesses.

Brand financial valuators, such as Interbrand, devote their existence to estimating these intangible assets. And what they find again and again is that the top brands in the world account for significant chunks of their respective companies’ value.

Take Apple, for example. By evaluating its brand earnings and impact — which are the share of earnings that can be attributed to the strength of the brand — and its brand multiple — which is how likely that the brand will retain its value in years ahead, aka net present value — Interbrand estimates that Apple’s brand in 2023 is worth around $502,680 $m.

When we take that number and divide it by the company’s market cap (at the time of this writing, $3.46T), we land on 15%.

In other words, Apple’s brand equity — aka, all of its associations in the minds of consumers — is worth around 15% of the company’s total value.

Therefore, with this sobering realization that brands typically are the most valuable asset any company possesses, the role of brand management becomes ever clearer.

On the other hand, as consumers, we use brands that we’re familiar with. Brands that we know possess the right level of quality we desire and at times lay upon us a range of meanings we aspire to convey about ourselves. In other words, brands serve as “shortcuts” to our purchasing decision-making.

With that, as marketers it’s our jobs to ensure people know our brands exist, determine what we want them to be known for, and above all to make sure people are then thinking about those “right” things when they think of us.

And that can only be done through proper brand management.

Inspiration: Pizza Hut’s “ResZAmes”

Every year as we enter the last few months of the year companies begin putting their following year’s plans in motion and a hiring spree often takes place.

Pizza Hut realized that since so many companies already order their product for business meetings and team events, they could lend a hand to aspiring talent looking to join those very businesses.

This key insight not only turned the medium into the message, but it created a new media channel altogether by printing people’s resumes onto their pizza boxes and getting them delivered to the hopeful talent’s employer of choice.

What a novel way to insert your brand into culture — and into an occasion that’s not often talked about outside of HR departments.

Too bad I’m not hiring right now.

Upcoming: CMA’s “Strategy Week”

A few months ago the Calgary Marketing Association ran its first “Creativity Week”, by offering free online webinars for people to join and learn from the very best creatives in the business.

Well, that was such a success that they’re now planning our very own “Strategy Week”!

There are 5 great FREE sessions for you to pick from (or join all five of them). All you got to do is signup below.

I’ll be moderating a panel of brilliant strategy minds around the topic “What Is Strategy” on Wednesday, October 2 at 12PM MST.

Panel Discussion – What Is Strategy?

Wednesday Oct 2 from 12-1pm MST

Panel discussion featuring Kristine Neil – Stone Olafson, Scott King – H2, Blanka Martin – ZGM, Pedro Porto Alegre – WJ

Is strategy just a buzzword or the beating heart of every business decision? Join us for a lively discussion that challenges the very notion of “strategy.” What is it, really? Is it “the art of making choices,” as one expert puts it, or “the science of aligning resources,” as another argues?

Expect a clash of perspectives as thought leaders debate whether strategy is a roadmap to success or a framework for navigating chaos. Dive deep into diverse viewpoints and fresh insights that redefine what strategy means for organizations today. Don’t miss this chance to rethink your own strategic mindset!

SIGN UP FOR FREE HERE!

More of PPA:

• 🤝 Connect with Pedro on LinkedIn and/or X

• 🍻 Come by the WJ office for a brew

• 💌 In case you missed it:

  • Planning Advertising That Yields Great Ideas

  • The Strategic Backbone Behind Brand Hierarchy Trees

  • The Strategic Importance of Knowing Your Numbers

PPA 

Pedro Porto Alegre is a seasoned marketing professional with in-depth experience building brand and communications strategies for top-tier B2C and B2B organizations across Canada. His repertoire extends from crafting and executing integrated multi-media brand marketing campaigns to the commercialization of performance-driven innovations for multimillion-dollar and nascent brands alike.